


What You Need is All I Want

by 17 pansies (17pansies), sly (curiously_me)



Category: Marvel (Movies), The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Can you have D/s fluff?, D/s, Fluff, M/M, PWP, Podfic prompt, RBB, bottom!clint, top!POV, top!phil
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-08-31
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:50:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,234
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/17pansies/pseuds/17%20pansies, https://archiveofourown.org/users/curiously_me/pseuds/sly
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Only Phil knows what Clint needs after a mission.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What You Need is All I Want

**Author's Note:**

> The first few hundred words are of sly_hostetter's making, and were her podfic prompt for the Avengers Reverse Big Bang art that I was fortunate enough to be assigned. The rest is purely my own fault and I take all the blame for twisting her innocent prose into something a touch more grown-up :)  
> 

“So, I was just waiting for something to happen, hanging out,” Clint rambled, pacing in the space between the door and the two chairs in front of Phil’s desk. Something had the archer on edge and he wasn’t calming down, even now that they were safe.

“I think you mean, dangling by your fingernails from a crumbling rooftop?” Natasha’s eyebrow rose as she spoke, voice sounding slightly sardonic. Clint’s rambling had obviously started long before they’d reached Phil’s office for her to be this short with her partner. 

“Psh, semantics and I will never get along, Nat, no matter how hard you try to make us.” Clint only shrugged her words off, ignoring both the concern she so rarely showed and the warning signs that he was about to push her too far. “Anyway, so I’m hanging -- dangling -- from a rooftop, have only seconds to figure something out when suddenly everything seems like it’s in slow motion. You know, like in the Matrix. It was just that cool and then I’m reaching out and grabbing for one of those experimental arrows Tony keeps hiding in my quiver and firing. I’m praying to god (but not Thor, never doing that again, he acted really weird the one time I tried) that it does something useful and you know what?”

There was a long pause.

“What Clint?” Phil asked with a heavy sigh. “What happened next?” He knew it would only encourage Clint’s downward spiral, but at that moment, he didn’t have a choice. There wasn’t anything he could do while they were on the helicarrier and, if he were being honest with himself, he wouldn’t have wanted to fix things here anyway. Too many bad memories for all three of them on here.

“Aw, I knew you weren’t ignoring me! I am totally your favourite! Ow, Natasha that’s not fair, just because I’m the favourite... Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! Ow! C’mon, I’m gonna need that finger, Nat! Naaaaat!”

Phil didn’t move from behind his desk. He could see that, while slightly painful, Natasha’s hold on Clint’s fingers wouldn’t cause any lasting damage or even lingering soreness once she released him.

“Would you rather I mention the incident of the mission prior to this one? Or are you going to finish the debrief without any further embellishment?” she asked, words clipped and to the point. As if Phil didn’t already know exactly what she was talking about.

“Fine, fine, you’ve convinced me... Cliff Notes version then: Iron Man and Cap are a seamless fighting team, Thor is great for extra air support, Hulk and Natasha are some serious killing machines (though Nat is much neater), and I am above such trivial things as getting my hands dirty.”

Phil looked up at that, brow creased in worry. 

“Your nest was compromised?”

“Not so much ‘compromised’ as not properly utilized, I would say.” Natasha smirked at Clint, as she spoke.

“It’s not like I didn’t want to use it. It was shifty.”

And now it was Phil’s turn to feel his eyebrows attempt to meet his hairline. He looked straight into Clint’s eyes as he asked “The nest that was pre-screened for safety and that covered nearly the entire area of attack, was ‘shifty’?”

“Yeah. And that’s a bit of keyword use right there, ‘nearly the entire area of attack’ which means not the whole thing. My new perch covered everything I needed to see. If I’d used SHIELD’s ‘pre-approved’ nest, I wouldn’t have seen those two guys that were on Cap’s blindside.”

But Phil could hear in Clint’s voice the need to know he’d made the right decision in ignoring orders and doing his own thing. Clint Barton had come to SHIELD without any limits and, though he’d tried to learn them, he never knew when he’d gone too far.

“He does have a point.”

“Don’t encourage him, Natasha.” Another sigh. “Just tell someone the next time you decide to find your own perch, would you Clint? At least then we will have a vague idea of where to send someone to catch you when you inevitably fall,” Phil admonished, turning his attention back to the report he was filling out. It would appear that some creative writing would need to be implemented, if Clint was going to avoid yet another reprimand being entered into his permanent file.

“Heeeey! I didn’t fall, the building collapsed underneath me!” Clint turned big, puppy like eyes on Natasha. “Seriously, Nat, you’re going to let him put that into the file... the file that will live longer than either of us. C’mon, you can’t let this happen again, I’ll be the laughing stock of the team.”

Coulson watched as Hawkeye and Black Widow bickered with each other. One day they would get bored with this routine, be able to decompress after a mission without the idiocy and arguments, but that day was a long, long way off in the future. 

It had taken them more years than he cared to remember just to get to this point.

“When you’ve finished,” Coulson interrupted. They both focussed on him immediately and he was slightly gratified to note that even when they were ostensibly off duty that he could draw their attention so easily. “We’re done here. Therefore, I suggest we take this back to the Tower where we can get some rest.”

“Yes sir,” they said in unison, and Coulson did sigh then, thankful. At least they both knew what he really meant. He watched Romanoff get to her feet, feline and graceful in spite of the bloody bandage around her thigh and the heavy bruising smeared purple and red across her right cheek and temple. They’d been checked out by the medics, albeit under duress but that didn’t stop Coulson worrying about them. Barton offered him a grin as he bounced to his feet, but there was no hiding the wince.

“Can I offer you a lift, sir?” Barton asked. 

“A lift, Specialist?”

“Sure.” Another cocky grin. “Thought I’d borrow a Quinjet, scoop Nat up and whisk her back to Stark’s place before Fury knows we’ve even left.”

“Barton, the likelihood of Director Fury not realising you’ve stolen a SHIELD jet is even less likely than him not knowing you’ve left the building.”

Romanoff snorted before rolling her eyes.

“No Elvis references before dinner,” she told him. “Stark would probably send a helicopter.”

“We’re too high,” Coulson told her, absently shuffling through a stack of papers. “Current altitude is a little over 24,000 feet.”

He looked up at the silence and found both his agents staring at him.

“What?” he asked. “I was in the military, remember. I know these things. Even a Black Hawk can only get up to about 19,000 feet.”

“You are a mine of random information,” Barton shook his head. “So how are we getting to Stark’s?”

It took Coulson a little under five minutes to get them a pilot and Quinjet to fly them all back to New York. Fury had taken very little convincing when Coulson had informed him that for sanity’s sake, it was better than the Avengers were all in one place, ie Stark Tower, where he, Coulson, could keep an eye on them, and not running amok on Fury’s newly fixed Helicarrier. The director had fervently agreed.

“One day you’re going to tell us how that’s done,” Barton grumbled, strapping himself into the co-pilot’s seat. “You must have some serious dirt on Fury, you know, as you always get what you want.”

“Not always, and if I did ‘have dirt’, it would be classified.” As the jet lifted off from the centre of the runway, Coulson allowed his eyes to close for a brief moment. Just another hour, he thought, and he could get everyone settled back into place and then he’d be free to relax. In theory.

In the meanwhile, however, he decided to keep quiet and just listen to Barton and Romanoff verbally spar. They kept it up for the entire journey, much to the pilot’s discomfort. Coulson could see the man twitching when the Widow began to get a little descriptive in what she was going to do to Barton if he didn’t shut up and concede the point. Seeing as how Hawkeye was in the co-pilot’s seat though, she wasn’t going to act on it just yet.

“Enough,” Coulson said, and the resulting silence was loud. He could see Stark Tower in the distance and sighed. “I would thank you, the both of you, to remain silent for the rest of the trip. Lieutenant, once we’re off the Director wants you to return directly to the carrier.”

“Yes sir,” the man said with feeling.

The pilot had barely made contact with the landing pad before Barton was up and out of his seat, hauling the door open and jumping down onto the gangway. Romanoff followed on silent feet. She paused just inside the tower and waited until Coulson was through the doors and the Quinjet had lifted off again.

“Are you alright?” she asked. When Coulson nodded, she glanced down the corridor where Barton had vanished. She huffed through her nose in a distinctly Russian manner and then sighed. “You probably have about eight minutes to yourself.”

“I know. Go get some rest, Tasha.” He watched her walk off and pinched the bridge of his nose to fight off the faint threat of a headache.

What Coulson really wanted was a shower with water that wasn’t rationed, a cup of coffee that had actually been near a real coffee bean at some point in its lifetime, a bed that was wider than thirty inches and twelve uninterrupted hours of sleep. Three out of four, he decided, letting himself into his rooms, wouldn’t be that bad.

First the suit had to come off, so he emptied his pockets onto the dresser top. Spare change, a couple of bullet clips, knife, keys, chewing gum, an EMP arrowhead that he’d picked up for one reason or another, a paperclip, his ID badge, StarkPhone – they were all piled together on the polished wood surface. His trousers and jacket were dropped into a dry cleaning holdall and the rest of his clothes went into the laundry chute. He didn’t know how Jarvis kept tabs on who wore what, but somehow, his laundry would end up back in front of his door in a neatly folded pile within a day or two. Most of the time. There had been one memorable occasion when Banner had found a selection of small, black lace items in amongst his crisply ironed shirts. Barton had thought it was hilarious, Cap turning pink and Stark eyeing Romanoff thoughtfully for several days after.

Buck naked and feeling lighter than he had in about thirty-six hours, Phil made his way to the bathroom and into the huge walk-in shower that Jarvis had started on his request. 

The water was hot and Phil allowed himself the indulgent luxury of simply standing there, head bowed as the heat sluiced the dust and grime of the days away.

“Jarvis,” Phil said, reaching for the shampoo after long, long minutes of simply soaking. “Please start the coffee machine and lower the ambient temperature to eighteen degrees centigrade.”

“Yes sir,” the AI replied.

“Also, please inform me if Agent Barton breaks into my rooms.”

“Agent Barton is already watching your television.”

“Thank you Jarvis.” A pause whilst he rinsed his hair and reached for the soap. “Has he eaten?”

“No sir. He made use of his shower before transiting to your quarters via the ventilation ducts that Mr Stark has retrofitted with a sensor array.”

“Okay. Order a couple of pizzas from the place on 17th please.” He touched the panel that shut the water off as Jarvis concurred. Phil had known this was coming from the moment the briefing on the carrier had started.

“Four hundred odd channels,” Clint announced as Phil walked into the living room. “And there’s fuck all on.”

“Four hundred and thirty seven.” Phil rubbed absently at his hair with a towel, waiting for Clint to turn around. “And why don’t you use the door like anybody else?”

“Because you don’t let just anybody else into your room.” Clint spun around where he sat cross legged on the coffee table and Phil had to smile as Clint’s eyes went wide. “Holy shit, Coulson, you trying to give me a heart attack?”

Phil glanced down at the small white towel that was just about wrapped around his hips. 

“I just wanted to check that you’re alright with pizza. Jarvis has ordered.”

“Am I alright with… what? Pizza? It’s one of the four food groups, along with coffee, donuts and pancakes with sausage.”

“That’s five.”

“No it’s not, pancakes and sausage counts as one, you can’t have one without the other.” As he spoke, Clint’s eyes were roving across Phil’s chest. “Are we really talking about food right now?” he asked, getting to his feet.

“You are,” Phil pointed out helpfully. 

Clint stalked across the room. He wasn’t so much hawk as mountain lion at that moment, all blonde hair and golden muscle, clad in a t-shirt and black sweatpants. Phil didn’t move, allowing Clint to walk right into his space.

“Forget food,” Clint growled, sliding a hand into the towel around Phil’s waist and tugging so they were hip to hip and toe to toe. “Some things supersede even eating.”

“Is this what all the bickering and snark has been leading up to?”

“Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking exactly the same thing when Nat and I staggered in, covered in blood and dust and sweat.” A brief tug removed Phil’s towel. “Jesus Christ, Phil.” Clint swayed for a moment before leaning forward so his whole body was plastered against Phil’s, nuzzling behind Phil’s ear into clean, damp skin. “You smell so good.”

“You’re ok,” Phil breathed against the side of Clint’s head. He could feel the tremors running through the solid muscles pressed to his. 

“Of course I’m okay, I have you here - naked, I may add - and there’s pizza on the way. What more could anyone want?” He rubbed his nose around the shell of Phil’s ear. “I was thinking about this, on that roof.”

“Mmm?” It was a non-committal noise, mainly because Phil didn’t trust his voice just yet. Not with the heat Clint was giving out and the warm puffs of breath against his ear.

“Was pretty much the only thing keeping me focussed on killing those things, knowing that once they were all gone, I could get you back here, strip you down and drop to my knees for you. Would you like that?” he added, sliding rough hands around Phil’s waist. “If I were to drop to my knees right here, in the middle of the room, just for you?”

“Only for me.” It came out rougher than he’d intended, but Clint didn’t seem to mind. “Kneel.”

With a sub-vocal growl, Barton dropped and nuzzled into the crease of Phil’s thigh. 

“Did I say you could touch me?” Phil asked him, and some of the fizzing energy left Clint’s body. “Head up and level.”

Clint settled back onto his heels, hands resting lightly on his knees and his unfocussed gaze now fixed on Phil’s bare stomach. 

“You will keep still for me.” Phil took half a step back. Clint made the tiniest of noises in the back of his throat and Phil knew he had some work to do. “Don’t think, Clint. Don’t speak, don’t move. Just feel.”

Phil ran gentle fingers over Clint’s head, through the short, dark blonde strands of hair. Clint tried to push into Phil’s touch, but each time he moved, Phil took his hand away. The minutes began to lengthen, bleeding together until time stopped meaning anything.

“Still,” he reminded Clint, just once. “Close your eyes.”

He wanted to blindfold him, to remove one of Clint’s key senses but right now, that wasn’t an option. It wasn’t something Clint was comfortable with at the best of times and today it would be a step too far. 

Phil stood behind him, not touching now. There was a strange dichotomy going on here, Clint kneeling fully dressed, Phil stood completely naked. But Phil had never been one to need toys or props in order to make his will felt. He let a gentle thumb drift along the curve of Clint’s jaw and hummed in approval as Clint didn’t so much as flinch.

“A little straighter,” he murmured, and Clint’s spine shifted just enough to bring him fully upright. “Very good.”

Clint’s breathing had slowed. As Phil watched, the tension began to bleed from Clint’s powerful shoulders. His posture never wavered; it was something almost indefinable in the way the muscles rippled beneath the smooth skin, his hands relaxing where they lay unmoving on his thighs. It was beautiful.

“Do not move,” Phil told Clint, and crossed to the small touch screen on the wall by the main door. He didn’t want to risk breaking Clint’s focus by speaking aloud to Jarvis, so he typed a swift message to the A.I. and heard the door lock engage as Jarvis’ reply popped up on screen. 

Phil moved to stand in front of Clint and with gentle fingers in the cropped blonde hair, tugged lightly until Clint’s forehead was resting on Phil’s hip.

“You’re so good,” Phil murmured. “So very good for me. Makes me proud of you, Clint.” And it did. He felt like his heart was going to leap out of his chest sometimes when Clint was like this. Today, it was a delicious warm pressure inside of him. Pride and love and a sweet-sharp need that Phil pushed into its corner to wait. 

He could wait. It was something he was very good at.

“Stand up, Clint.” 

Sinuously, he got to his feet. That was one thing Phil envied, Clint’s total control over his body. It was fit and sculpted to something almost beyond physical perfection, and Clint could push himself to the absolute edge of his physiological capability. Something that Phil had tested on occasion.

Tonight was not a night for testing anything, however. He moved to stand beside him, and ran a soothing hand down Clint’s arm until their fingers were entwined.

“Come with me.” 

A gentle tug was all it took to have Clint following him, docile and trusting, eyes still shut as they made their way into the bedroom. Phil positioned Clint at the foot of the bed and stepped back.

“Now strip. Slowly,” he added as Clint went to yank the t-shirt off. “Gently, Clint. Imagine my hands are doing it. How slow and careful I would be.”

A tremor went through the muscular body, but Clint complied. He slid the black sweatpants down an inch at a time until they were past his backside and simply fell to the floor. No underwear, Phil noted. The t-shirt was slipped off in a similar fashion and Clint paused with it in his hands, unsure of how or where to put it down with his eyes closed.

“Drop it,” Phil made the decision for him. “Now onto the bed, on your stomach.”

Clint spread himself across the charcoal grey covers and lay still.

“Hands level with your head,” said Phil. “Do not move them.” 

Then Phil stood silently at the side of the bed and looked.

As assignments went, it hadn’t been the hardest one he’d ever sent his specialists on. They’d both come back with minimal injuries, nothing half an hour in medibay hadn’t sorted out. Clint was bruised across his shoulders and right hip from his tumble down from the roof. Three stitches closed the short but deep gash in his left bicep. The bruising on his left thigh wouldn’t slow him noticeably but was going to turn him black and blue from knee to hip.

Phil sighed, rubbing absently at the still-pink scar on his own chest.

“You need to take better care of this body, Clint,” he said, his voice a low murmur. Kneeling on the edge of the bed, he pressed his fingers into the bruises at Clint’s hip. The only response was a sharply indrawn breath. “This belongs to me, Clint. This body. This skin. These muscles.” He ran a hand down the mottled purple markings on Clint’s flank. “Mine, Clint. You must stop being so careless with this body. Do you understand? Use words.”

“I do.”

“You do what?”

“Understand.” Clint’s voice was wrecked, Phil noted with some satisfaction. It was low and rough, but the tone was subdued.

“Tell me.”

“It’s yours, so I need to look after it better.”

“Not just your body, Clint. All of you. Every last inch.” Phil leaned forward and ghosted his lips across the nape of Clint’s neck, watching the shiver run down Clint’s spine. “Keep your eyes closed, love.” Phil felt more than heard the sub-vocal whimper as he nipped Clint’s ear with careful, blunt teeth.

Phil kissed down the length of Clint’s spine, each vertebra receiving the touch of his lips. By the time he reached the small of Clint’s back, every tight muscle was completely relaxed. Clint didn’t even flinch as Phil slipped a single slick finger into him. 

“Look at you,” Phil murmured, carefully twisting his finger until it brushed across Clint’s prostate. A firm hand in the small of Clint’s back kept him from startling too much. “So beautiful, Clint. Spread out for me, all for me and no one else, relaxed and receptive and so, so gorgeous. I need you to feel this, Clint,” he said as he added another finger. “Feel everything I’m doing to you. All that energy you’ve got, all that power and anger and need and drive – I want it. I want every last bit of it focussed on me and what I’m doing and all you have to do is feel, Clint. Feel this, feel my love, feel how much I’m going to take care of you and give you everything you need. You know I’ll do that, don’t you Clint? I always give you everything you need.”

Phil wasn’t usually one for talking so much, but he knew that after a day like they’d had, Clint found his voice soothing. So very different from when it was over the comm. link, Clint had admitted before that it was like an anchor, keeping him safe. If there was just one thing Phil could do, he would choose to keep Clint safe.

Beneath Phil’s strong, capable hands, Clint was virtually boneless. Phil could feel just how relaxed Clint was; there was no resistance when he slipped a third finger in and he decided that enough was enough.

“Let me hear you, Clint,” Phil murmured, reaching for a condom. It wasn’t necessary but it made clean up so much easier and far less intrusive. He wasn’t going to risk jarring Clint for even a second. “I want to hear what my touch does to you.” 

This was a selfish, Phil knew. Clint made such delicious noises and Phil didn’t actually like it when Clint chose to be silent. Sometimes, though, Clint couldn’t speak. Couldn’t communicate through anything but the way his body moved and a reassuring squeeze of Phil’s fingers. But it was when Clint, whose modes of communication were smartass and silence, was reduced to gasping out Phil's name - when Phil was so deep inside him and they were so connected he could barely breathe - then Phil knew perfection.

Phil knelt between Clint’s spread legs and draped himself over the broad, muscular back. Clint arched up a little, presenting his backside. They fit so seamlessly together, after all of these years, their bodies just knowing what to do without conscious thought. 

Clint let out a ragged groan as Phil breached him, Phil fighting back his own gasp as how quickly Clint’s body let him in. 

“Beautiful,” Phil breathed, sliding his hands down Clint’s arms until he could tangle their fingers together. Clint immediately squeezed his hands twice and Phil brushed a fond kiss across the back of his neck. “I know you’re with me, Clint, but I still need to hear you.” He drew out an inch or two before smoothly thrusting back in.

“God, Phil.” Clint’s voice was dark and rough, muffled in the comforter, but it was exactly what Phil needed to hear. “More.”

“More?” Phil nuzzled into the warm skin behind Clint’s ear. “More what?”

“Please, god, Phil. More,” Clint panted. “Harder.” Phil chuckled.

“No.” He slowed his measured thrusts, making Clint feel every inch of the glide in and out. “More I can give you, with pleasure. But harder? No. Not tonight, love.”

Clint gave a whimper and tried bucking back up. 

Phil froze. He held himself completely still and tightened his grip on Clint’s hands. A shudder ran through the muscular body beneath him. Phil was under no illusions as to who was the stronger of the two of them. But he also knew that Clint would never use that strength, not without permission. After a long moment, some of the tension subsided.

“Please.” It was a strangled whisper. “I want to feel it.”

“And you will.” Phil withdrew almost fully, paused for a moment, then rocked back into Clint’s trembling body. “You will feel every inch of me.”

“Phil…”

The pace he set was torturous. Just a fraction slower than what Clint craved, but more than enough to fuel the gradually building need. After long, long minutes of slow, careful fucking, the tremors in Clint’s arms changed. Instead of repressed need, it became something far more intense. 

Clint was beyond words now. If Phil had ordered him to talk, he wasn’t sure Clint would have been capable of anything more than an approximation of Phil’s own name. Instead, all Clint could manage was a stream of low, sub-vocal grunts, interspersed with the occasional breathless whimper. Even the word ‘please’ was out of reach. Each time Phil bottomed out now, Clint’s hips stuttered. 

“Don’t come yet, love,” Phil murmured in Clint’s ear. Clint shuddered violently. “I want you to feel everything. Every hair on your body that is standing on end. Each square inch of skin that touches mine. Every bruise.” He pressed his fingers into the marks on Clint’s hips and kissed the purpling marks on Clint’s shoulders. “I have you, Clint. I have you. You’re safe. You’re mine and I’ve got you.”

Slowly, the trembling subsided as Clint gave up the last vestiges of control. Phil could almost taste the implicit trust Clint had in him. But even Phil’s control had limits.

He began to move a little quicker. Clint’s yielding body was hot around him and the curling tendrils of orgasm started to unfurl from the base of his spine and snake out through his limbs.

“You’re so good,” Phil told him. “Not yet,” he added as Clint whimpered again, hips rutting against the sheets beneath him. “Do not come until I tell you to.”

Suddenly, he needed to see him. To kiss him, even.

The pitiful whimper Clint gave when Phil pulled out was almost painful to hear.

“It’s okay,” Phil assured him. “Roll over for me, love. On your back, hands above your head.”

Clint flipped himself over with a speed and grace that had Phil full of admiration. His eyes were still closed and Phil watched, approving, as Clint’s hands wrapped around the metal bars of the headboard.

“Perfect,” Phil told him. “Don’t let go.” Clint’s legs were already up around Phil’s hips and he slid back in with a soft sigh. “Love you. So good, love, so damn good.”

Clint had more leverage at this angle and pushed up into Phil. By this point, though, he couldn’t back off. Clint was now exactly where Phil had wanted him all along, feeling everything and thinking nothing. He sped up, still not fast or hard by any means but quicker than he’d gone all evening and Clint responded, head tilting up in blind supplication. How was he meant to resist that? Those full lips, slightly parted as Clint gasped and moaned.

Phil kissed him, a little rough and a touch more desperate than he would have like to admit. Now each breath Clint took was Phil and every one of Phil’s was Clint and then there was no separation between them anymore.

“Come for me,” Phil ordered in the space between one breath and the next kiss. “Now, Clint.”

“Phil,” Clint gasped, hands clutching at the headboard at either side of his head as every muscle in his body tensed, obeying Phil’s command instantly. His back arched nearly off the mattress. “God, Phil, Phil…”

Phil barely had time to register the words before his own orgasm was upon him, shredding his control and his sanity. He felt the liquid heat between them as Clint came and came, muscles spasming around Phil and forcefully pulling his orgasm from him. He gave in, shuddering, wishing that he’d not worn a condom and had been able to mark Clint inside as Clint had marked them both on the outside. 

Slowly, senses returned. Heart rates dropped, breathing eased and Phil lifted his head from where it had been resting on Clint’s shoulder. A small surge of pride filled him as he saw the grip Clint still had on the bars of the headboard. 

“Open your eyes,” he said softly. “And you can let go now.”

Clint’s eyes were a little out of focus, but the smile on his face was relaxed and goofy. Phil watched as Clint released his hold on the headboard and flexed his fingers to get some feeling back into them.

“Words,” Phil prompted him.

“I was good?” It was always Clint’s first question. At Phil’s nod, the smile broadened and then Clint’s eyes flickered shut again.

“You were perfect,” Phil told him, smoothing damp strands of dark blonde hair out of Clint’s face. “I’m going to move now, but you stay right there.”

The only response he got was a happy little hum. Clint really was adorable in his post-orgasm subspace, Phil decided. Carefully, he climbed off the bed, having already slipped free of Clint’s body whilst they were recovering and padded into the bathroom. A couple of minutes later he was back with a warm, soft washcloth and a glass of water.

“Come on, love,” he said, kneeling on the bed. Using slow, firm strokes, he cleaned Clint’s chest and stomach and then stroked a gentle finger over Clint’s cheek. “You need to wake up a little, Clint.”

“Uh-huh,” was all the reply he got, but after a moment, Clint blinked a few times and let Phil pull him upright. 

“Sit there and drink this.” Phil passed him the glass and watched intently until most of the water had gone. “Are you hungry?”

“Not now, no.”

“So do you think you’re going to be able to sleep then?”

“As long as you’re here,” replied Clint, and the soft little smile all but melted Phil into a puddle on the spot.

Smartass or silence, Phil thought, placing the empty glass on the side and tugging at the covers so he could join Clint under them. Make that smartass, silence or sweet sincerity, he decided. But only he ever got to hear the last one.

**Author's Note:**

> This wouldn't have been possible without the wonderful Yakkorat. Thank you, my darling, for knowing *exactly* what Clint needed when he was on his knees. <3
> 
> Thanks, too, go to Clio_jlh and Torakowalski for beta. :)


End file.
